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Author: Guy Stephens

I'm trying my best to understand this thing called 'social' and how it is changing the way companies and customers communicate with each other. I am a Social Customer Care Consultant at IBM. Previously worked at Capgemini, The Carphone Warehouse, Mars, Inc. While at The Carphone Warehouse I set up the use of social media within customer service. I've worked in the digital space since about 1997 and covered a variety of roles over the years.

I also run a LinkedIn group - 'Where Social Media Meets Customer Service' ; Founding Council Member of BestServiceOne.com, the customer service portal for CustomerThink.com ; write a blog about social customer care - Beingguy1067.com ; run a social customer care weekly - Simplicity of Service - using paper.li ; tweet as @guy1067 ; and am lucky enough to be invited to speak at conferences and write articles for various publications.

Social customer care has been around for roughly five years and I'm wondering how much it has really moved on in that time, since the first Tweet was sent by Frank Eliason, #Twelpforce, giffgaff and United Breaks Guitar.

Does Amazon's Mayday and NatWest's use of Vine videos for customer service give us cause for optimism?

I was recently asked a question: Do we invest in multichannel or get the basics right?

It got me thinking that all too often we think in ‘exclusive absolutes’ – one or the other – multichannel or the basics, Twitter or Facebook, social or traditional, chat or email, call deflection or everything else…

And yet the answer is far more complex. Complex because ultimately what companies are trying to decipher is the panoply of human behaviour. Customers are unpredictable. The challenge for companies is not in understanding that, but rather where to draw the line?

The last eighteen months have witnessed
a huge shift in the way that customers seek help for their customer service
queries, problems and complaints.

The continued mainstreaming of
social media has been catalytic in transforming this once settled
landscape from a closed one-to-one transaction to a more open and
conciliatory experience characterised by empathy.

I have been exploring for a while to see if a link between our customer service agents on Yammer and our customers on Twitter exists. Is there a point at which the two platforms could come together in the provision of customer service?

Happily there is. It's a bit clunky but it works. And the answer is '#yam'.

There are lots of articles about how brands should use Twitter. They all give good sound advice to the budding corporate tweeter: listen before you dive in, have something relevant to say, or learn from cases like Motrin or Skittles.

This is all very generic though, so let me try to give you my random insights and observations as @guy1067, a corporate tweeter for Carphone Warehouse.

We live in a maelstrom of activity and invention. A new world we are evolving every day; some days more than others. We sometimes, perhaps more often than we'd like to think, get caught up in the hype or in the detail of what we do. We get stuck on definitions and fads, guidelines and best practice, manifestos and policies.

We also forget about the simple beauty of the medium we work in. This is a personal reflection, indulgent perhaps. But I make no concessions: it sometimes good to take a step backwards and reflect on what we've got now and what's in front of us.